underclass

noun

un·​der·​class ˈən-dər-ˌklas How to pronounce underclass (audio)
: the lowest social stratum usually made up of disadvantaged minority groups

Examples of underclass in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
These examples are automatically compiled from online sources to illustrate current usage. Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
The uncomfortable truth is that the welfare system has created the underclass. Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Orange County Register, 4 Oct. 2024 Despentes offers no quarter to her titular hero, whose dark wit and casually racist rants come at the reader in a mad rush of metaphors and aphorisms, Despentes’s gutter vernacular of the underclass. Marc Weingarten, The Atlantic, 23 Sep. 2024 Alongside online schools, international efforts are ramping up to educate teenage girls and women, who are all but confined to their homes by a regime that sees them as a subservient underclass. Hilary Whiteman, CNN, 15 Aug. 2024 Because most low-skilled immigrants to the United States, indeed most U.S. immigrants in general, are nonwhite, many of them from Latin America, there will be a racialized aspect to the underclass. Noah Smith, Foreign Affairs, 11 Oct. 2018 See all Example Sentences for underclass 

Word History

First Known Use

1918, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of underclass was in 1918

Dictionary Entries Near underclass

Cite this Entry

“Underclass.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/underclass. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.

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